Okay, got no answers before so I’ve changed entire post above instead of spamming the forum with a repost thread… hope this one is short and simple for someone to answer.
A part of that wonkyness is because you are using the child of the shin bone as the target for the IK … creating a cyclic dependency … as well as the confusing (for the IK solver) fact that you also have Auto IK on which doesn’t use pole targets …
If you separate the foot from the shin/cancel the parenting relationship the pole target works as expected … though it works as expected for 2 bone IK chains better then 3 + bone chains … I don’t think they developed this for chains longer then 2 bones … The pole target completely disregards IK limits/locks, for example … I use the workaround of overlapping IK solvers since I rarely have chain lengths shorter then 3 bones, though that also has it’s problems …
Okay, I got it working very close to how I wanted, thanks to your explanation but I am confused as a result…
I got it by giving parent of “none” to the foot_L bone, disabling IK and setting chainlength of the pole vector to 2, with the offset to 70.
I’m confused by the leg not being IK… isn’t IK where you drag the foot around and the leg follows? Why does pole vector need to break this rule? I take it that it’s because otherwise the foot would dictate direction to the knee, which would argue against what the pole vector is trying to do?
…okay then, is there a way I can have FK for the legs while having IK for the arms?
When I unparented the foot_L bone from shin_L, just unclicking the “connected” button did not work… I actually had to set the parent of foot_L to “none”… why is this? :spin:
Blender has two types of IK . One is Auto IK and the other is the IK Solver constraint . Auto IK (turned on in the Armature panel) acts like you discribed (move the foot the leg follows) . The IK Solver on the other hand requires a target object that is not connected to the IK chain by any parenting relationships (it can be a valid target only if it is the child of a bone that is not a part of the chain length) .
The new pole target option was developed to get (apparently for only 2 bone length chains) pointing in the right direction and only for the IK Solver … not the Auto IK …
okay then, is there a way I can have FK for the legs while having IK for the arms?
Well yes, just turn the Auto IK off … But usually you’ll find that having (targeted) IK for the legs and FK/IK switching on the arms is better for animation … It’s a lot easier to pose a character’s legs relative to the ground when the legs are IKed …
The devs made a couple of very good improvements to the Auto IK system … You can change the IK chain length “on the fly” by using your MMB/scroll bar or the pg up/pg dn keys (hit G then MMB/scroll bar or the pg up/pg dn keys - up in the 3D header you will see the chain length … scroll up or hit the pg up key to start), before the Auto IK would extend all the way down to the root if the bones were connected and the only way to control an Auto IK chain was to actually disconnect the bone (could keep parenting) … The other is that the Auto IK now respects the transform locks in the Transform Properties window (so you can lock up some axes to limit the rotation along a single axis like for the arms and legs for example) …
So I have been experimenting with an Auto IK enabled torso, but with targeted IK for the legs … It gets you pretty close to a full body IK set up …
When I unparented the foot_L bone from shin_L, just unclicking the “connected” button did not work… I actually had to set the parent of foot_L to “none”… why is this?
Yeah that’s sometimes a bit buggy … You can use the Ctrl-P/Alt-P hot keys instead . It seems a bit more stable . Beyond the usual parenting/unparenting functions, it also has additonal options like disconnect (Alt-P) and connect/keep offset (Ctrl-P) …
thanks to your explanation but I am confused as a result…
…okay then, is there a way I can have FK for the legs while having IK for the arms?